On a similar note as the previous post: 

You may remember the short-lived sci fi/western series called Firefly.  Pure genius.  Too bad it only lasted one season.

This scene is between Book, a Shepherd or Preacher, and River, a young woman left forever altered by extensive government experimentation, existing in a state of reality that is… a little different from ours….

 

[Shepherd Book prepares a meal as he absentmindedly addresses River.]

Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?

River: Fixing your Bible.

Book: I, um... What?

[Pan over to River, who works on a book with pens, brushes, and loose pages.]

River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics... doesn't make sense.  (she's marked up the bible, crossed out passages)

Book: No, no. You—you can't...

River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem.

Book: Really?

River: We'll have to call it "early quantum state phenomenon". Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammals on the same boat. (rips out page)

. . .

Book: River, you don't... fix the Bible.

River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense.

Book: It's not about... making sense. It's about believing in something. And letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you.

 

 

Sorry, Shepherd.  Think she’s not on the same wavelength.  But I’ll tell ya I understand about the Bible – don’t mess with a person’s Bible….

 

 

 

 

The sermon today was over Noah and the flood. An old, well-known story.  All of mankind, except Noah and his immediate family, and presumably all the animals except the ones carried on the ark, died in this extensive disaster.

In the Random Musing Department of my mind, I suddenly began to think of the multiple mass-extinctions recorded in Earth’s fossil record.  Some led to the loss of complete populations (ez: the extinction marking the K-T boundary); some led “merely” to a dramatic decrease in the total number of organisms overall in either a large or small area . 

So, following this line of thought (again, just my random musings), the Flood led to essentially a mass extinction.  Interesting parallel to contemplate. 

Take it a step further.  It is still interesting even if you decide to take the Flood story literally, as in the entire Earth was flooded, or the use the alternate theory, as explained by Ryan and Pitman, that the flooding of the area around the Black Sea centuries ago destroyed populations of organisms (plants, animals, humans…).

In the case of the 40 days and nights of rain, the oceans would be desalinated by the freshwater rain.  In the case of the Black Sea (which was freshwater due to the melting of area glaciers) which was overwhelmed by swift rising of the nearby Mediterranean Sea, again dramatically changing the salinity.  Aquatic life would be unable to deal with these rapid changes in salt content, and would therefore die off.  Any terrestrial species dependent upon this aquatic life for food would also be negatively affected.

Thus ends my mental game for today.

 

 

 

Mom just emailed me regarding a book she's reading right now, "When Christians Get It Wrong", by Adam Hamilton.  Here's a quote she pulled out:

 

"... a tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church pronounced Galileo a heretic for promoting a scientific idea that contradicted the church's teaching. ...At the time, the church taught that the sun rotated around the earth and Galileo believed Copernicus' theory that the earth rotated around the sun....The genesis account is not meant to teach us how God created but that God created....God was not concerned that we believed the earth was formed and then vegetation and then the sun. God knew we would figure out the science What had to be communicated was the theology--specifically, that there was a God who is the author of life, that creation is God's good gift, and that human beings were formed in God's image....science teaches us about how things unfold. It teaches us about how creation works. It gives us scenarios related to how the universe developed or how life evolved.....God created the process and the plans for progression of life of on our planet. whether each species was individually crafted by God or the result of a process God designed matter little to me ( the author). God remains the Creator either way."

 

Kinda covers what I believe myself, though more eloquently than I've tried to explain it.  Food for thought, in any case, no matter what you believe.